Why were squares ever added around my icons?

[JeremyG 30]

A while back  libraries didn't look like this.   The icons floated directly on the dark gray background.  (like they do in the Light theme).    I have to say...this looks like crap!  If I wanted gray boxes, I would add them to my icons.



 

[Luke 42078]

HI, there are a number of reasons why it is considered a best practice.

For one, if your images are all different aspects, then transparency creates a lot of uneven whitespace and it's hard to tell what's what. The background makes this easier. Secondly for long lists, content is loaded gradually as you scroll in, and the boxes serve as placeholders for the items that are loading, which is a helpful visual cue.

Now I suppose you can argue that My Media should be a special case exception, but in the majority of situations, it needs to be there.